Westmeadows were considered to be the luckiest team to avoid the Division One drop in 2012 with coach Mick Nippard struggling for consistency from his group which included former Adelaide rookie Balraj Singh.

The coach’s thoughts:

Peter Gleisner acknowledges his side will be up against it to match it with the big guns in Division 1 week to week saying that, “we are a young side, we will have games where we will be up and down, but we will train hard and be competitive”. It has always been Gleisner’s trademark as a player and coach; ruthless and uncompromising and you guarantee that his bunch of young Tigers in 2013 will adopt Gleisner’s mantra and approach to the game. Gleisner has not read too much into his sides loss to Division 2 side Moonee Valley in a practice match last week saying that “we had thirteen blokes playing their first game of senior football” and that the real focus was on tinkering with his sides game plan in the wet conditions to become a more versatile side.

Adam Papal’s say:

Westmeadows hit a massive low in 2012 and by the year’s end were truly uncompetitive. 2013 appears on the surface to be no better leading into the season proper. The departures of Ohlsen, Coles, Mullen and the one year wonder Balraj Singh places huge pressure on the coaching team to cover these players. Peter Gleisner’s emphasis has been on the mid range players and having a more even spread with their player expenditure. Their spine will be tested with a real lack of quality tall’s to work around with youngster Rhys Gleisner going to have to do a bulk of the ruck work in Scott Gilliland’s absence.

They have recruited Peter DiCecco, Daniel Bozzo and Jacob Calder from the Greenvale Under 18’s system but they will be unable to have a sufficient impact without much senior football experience. They and Hadfield will be favourites to be relegated, with both sides fully aware of the enormity of their Round 1 clash at Willowbrook Reserve.